LeakBird

(Dec. 22, 2008, Blue Planet / Green Living)
Toilets account for almost 30 percent of residential indoor water use in the United States. They’re also a major source of wasted water due to leaks and inefficiency. Unless a replacement has been installed, in a home built prior to 1993, each toilet likely uses 3 1/2 gallons [...]

(Dec. 17, 2008, The Pilot News)
At the start of Culver’s Town Council meeting, there really was no question the town was facing a water rate increase. Up for debate, instead, was the amount of increase.

(Photo Courtesy of Treehugger.com via AP/David Zalubowski)
Tenants who fail to report leaking or running toilets to Landlords or property managers cause water billing nightmares.  Usually, the best a Landlord can do is figure out in which unit the leaking toilet condition occurred, schedule a plumber to fix the problem, foot the exorbitant water bill, then [...]

(Dec. 8, 2008, KTBS Channel 3)
Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover’s administration wants to spend $10 million to install electronic water meters at businesses in the city…
Electronic water meters, which are automated, provide more accurate usage readings than older meters that are read by people…
The administration plan is limited to commercial water meters, although a changeover for [...]

(Nov. 30, 2008, The Chicago Tribune)
Detroit officials are expected to raise water and sewer rates next month as revenue dries up in the face of declining demand.
The Detroit Free Press reports Sunday that water rates could increase by up to 10 percent and sewer rates as much as 17 percent in the city and [...]

(Nov. 10, 2008, San Diego Union-Tribune)
The San Diego City Council is expected to approve an emergency water conservation plan. The plan to be voted on Monday includes banning landscape irrigation runoff and most ornamental fountains, establishing outdoor watering schedules and restricting car washing.

(Nov. 9, 2008, The Boston Globe)
Norfolk will not repay dozens of residents for repairing or replacing deteriorated underground water pipes on their property.
Residents who have faced thousands of dollars in bills contend that the town’s water supply played a role in the deterioration of the pipes. But town officials say that it is not clear [...]

(Nov. 7, 2008, The Deland-Deltona Beacon)
Deltona city commissioners didn’t really want to, but in the end they approved a 17.25- percent hike in the rates for city water and sewer.
They were warned Deltona’s utility system might become insolvent if they didn’t approve the price hike, the first in 13 years.

(Nov. 3, 2008, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
“These are people that have never asked for assistance before,” she said, referring to a third of her callers. But with “downsizing and all that, they find themselves in a situation they thought they never would be in.”
Georgia Power reports 12,000 more disconnects in the third quarter of this year [...]

(Oct. 30, 2008, Florida Today)
“The cities are realizing that the need to rebuild, upgrade and modernize will have to be paid for locally,” Berg said. “The public is much better off paying 4 percent (more) every year for their water, because that’s what the inflation rate is. I would at least expect the price of [...]

(Oct. 8, 2008, MarketWatch)
Research indicates that more than 85 percent of water leakage in residential plumbing systems is found in the toilet and a majority of toilet leaks are caused by faulty or worn flappers. A silent leak in a [...]

(Oct. 15, 2008, CBS4)
North Miami recently added a nearly 50 dollar fee to every quarterly water bill for residents. That increase has pushed Francisca’s dreams of a shower at home again, even farther out of reach.

(Oct. 10, 2008, San Jose Mercury News)
A projected water shortfall by 2030 is prompting renewed conservation efforts in San Jose, and the city council adopted a plan on Sept. 23 that will support some new conservation strategies — including potentially higher water rates…
About half of the city’s targeted water savings is expected to come [...]

(Sept. 25, Tuscon Citizen)  “The Water Conservation Alliance of Southern Arizona recently gave 61,000 leak detection kits to area water providers, though none were given to Tucson Water.“

The only problem is, few people are motivated to do the dye test every month.  Why not subsidize something that is more effective, like an acoustic battery-operated leak [...]

What with the new higher water rates for San Francisco set for Tuesday, July 1, 2008, I thought it’d be useful to describe how your water bill is calculated by the SFPUC, and demonstrate how easily your water bill could double or triple due to a running toilet or two.
An SFPUC water bill is made [...]

The new water rates are about to kick in in San Francisco, on July 1, 2008. The water rate across the board goes up $.40 per unit.  On the wastewater treatment side of things, T1 goes up $.28, T2 goes up $.71, and T3 goes up $.81 per unit.
What does all of this mean?  Well, [...]

It’s All About The Metering…

At present there is really no way to keep track of those responsible for excessive water use and waste among the millions of renters who live in buildings where water metering is building wide (or ‘master’ metered) rather than metered by unit, as is the case with gas and [...]

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American Rivers

http://blog.americanrivers.org/wordpress/index.php

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Last year property management and real estate behemoth CitiApartments purchased my 17-unit-or-so Victorian apartment building, which is kitty-corner to the upper east end of Dolores Park in the Mission in San Francisco. Lately my toilet, which must be from the 80’s (built some 30 years ago, in a time when natural resources seemed infinite), [...]

I’m a property manager for a mom-and-pop company that owns several residential buildings in San Francisco. In April of 2007 one of our buildings, a twenty-one unit, early 20th century Victorian in the Lower Haight, saw its water usage more than double over a two-month span, going from approximately 70,000 gallons to 168,000 gallons of [...]